However, over the past decade, their once diverse foreign language education has gradually become an English-oriented one. As English and these countries’ languages — except Finnish — are all Germanic, derived from Proto-Germanic, it is much easier for their populace to learn English than others. At this point in the Netherlands, 23 percent of undergraduate courses are taught only in English, with 12 percent offered in English or Dutch. The group said that most teachers’ English could only be called “Globish” — a broken English of poor quality — which would only lower the quality of classes and lead higher education catastrophically astray. Recent studies conducted in northern Europe on all-English education also confirmed that teaching in poor-quality English only results in undesirable outcomes.

Source: Taipei Times October 03, 2023 21:40 UTC